Mesopotamia - The Redeemer

by Yehuda Israely

  "You need to go and be tested by an eye doctor," whispered Diotima to Enosh. Enosh's room was not far from the lecture hall, and they took advantage of the break to walk around in the yard and drink a cold beverage. Diotima's entourage trudged after them.

  "Excuse me"?

  "Didn't you see the looks she was giving you?" asked Diotima.

  "Who"?

  "Enough! Come on, even an eye doctor couldn't help you".

  "Are you talking about the girl who crossed our path"?

  "Her and the ten before her".

  Enosh went quiet out of embarrassment. He didn't want Diotima to start nosing into his business, but he said nothing.

  "What's the matter?" Diotima went on, "You don't like the look of her? Maybe she isn't smart enough"?

  "She actually didn't look bad at all," replied Enosh.

  "So if you like the look of her, why are you traipsing around with an old woman instead of going after her"?

  "Today is dedicated only to you," said Enosh, and they both knew he was avoiding the topic. "Besides, how do you know she's interested"?

  "At the height of my dignified age, I know a thing or two about consciousness and its signs. As she passed by us, her mouth opened, her pupils dilated, her skin blushed, the small cough"…

  "Okay, okay," he stopped her.

  "Her walk became unstable, her hand pushed her hair behind her ear, she looked down to her cleavage"…

  "Stop, enough." Enosh began to laugh and Diotima joined him.

  The entourage stayed outside when they entered Enosh's room. Luka ran to Enosh happily and licked his hands.

  "Hello Luka, good dog." Enosh bent down and stroked his head.

  "Are you sure you've got a dog underneath that walking carpet?" Diotima joked as she petted Luka affectionately. The room looked like a battle had been waged in it. The floor was covered in books and paperwork, charcoal pencils and pencil shavings rolled around in the corners. On the shelves, there was a thin layer of dust mixed in with dog hair. The walls were filled with diagrams. It was clear that Enosh preferred to sketch his diagrams directly on the wall with charcoal pencils, and only later to transfer them to the computer. When he wanted to erase something or to fix it, he painted the place in white and wrote on it again. The complicated diagrams described relationship and consciousness processes in topological language. Enosh had taught topology, the use of graphic language to express logical ideas even before he came to the Socratics. He had always been interested in connecting dots into lines, to areas, to bodies, to dimensions, and into the processes that apply to topological elements, like unification, separation and intersection. The paradoxical shapes that represent logic beyond the possibilities of visual representation fascinated him. He was charmed by the views of Bohm, a quantum physicist from the middle of the twentieth century, according to which the world was made up of far more than can be described visually. He used his topological knowledge for consciousness healing by mapping out the components in the patient's mind. He outlined the process of the creation of consciousness, the creation of the faith in the difference between inside and outside, relations of attraction and pleasure, and relationships between partners and rivals. He drew structures of dual relationships, three-way relationships, and so on, more and more complicated, and super-dimensional data about society, politics and religion. Some of the diagrams, the largest, were only theoretical, and included only the letters that represented elements in the processes of consciousness as well as the arrows of flow charts connecting them. Other, smaller sketches were accompanied by encrypted text and described consciousness processes with details from specific patients. In the breaks between patients, he would scrawl down his thoughts and that was how he prepared for his next session.

  Enosh didn't feel any embarrassment at Diotima's scrutiny. She knew him well anyway, and knew that he didn't keep things in order. On the other hand, in the treatment room beside his living room, the walls were pristine and colored in warm, soothing earthy colors, and order prevailed above all.

  "Madam Defense Minister, a cold beer or whiskey with ice"?

  "Cold water for me. I still need to lecture today".

  "Could it be that you're nervous?" Enosh mocked her.

  "Of course, like a little girl," she smiled at him. "I reserve the right to a beer for after the lecture".

  Enosh took a balloon of beer and a balloon of cold water out of the refrigerator. He handed the water to Diotima who sat on one of the sofas. She ripped the corner of the balloon with her teeth and suckled distractedly.

  "It seems to me that it's not just the lecture that you're nervous about. There's something else in the air".

  "You see everything!" She protested.

  "Tell me"?

  "Later, when we get to the beer." She took a sip of water. "Well, Professor, when will you finally make time for love?" she returned to the same subject.

  Out of habit, Enosh stroked Luka, who pushed his snout into his hand.

  "That's what I love about Luka," said Enosh, "he never bothers me with questions like that".

  "Seriously, Enosh. Love is important. Our friendship is important. Let me get involved in your life".

  "Patience, my dear," replied Enosh, "I'm sure that when I'm ready for love, the right girl will be in place".

  They continued talking. Enosh told her about a new series of lectures he was planning for his exceptional students, and Diotima complained about the difficulty of achieving her goals embroiled in the bureaucracy and intrigues of the government.

  "Alright, if you've finished your beer, we'd better get back to the hall, otherwise you'll be late for my lecture", she said.

  Enosh chuckled. "Do you think I'd mess around with you?! Even when you didn't have the entire Atheist fleet at your command it was dangerous to be late for your class".

  The Socratic Festival of Knowledge lasted all day. The huge hall became more and more crowded. Students peeked in through windows, others sat on the window ledge, others sat on the floor in the aisles, and some even planned to sit on the sides of the podium. On the wide grassy meadow, giant screens had been installed which would broadcast the lectures to the hundreds of students who could not get a place in the hall.

  The climax of the festival was Diotima's lecture on "consciousness healing in Ancient Cultures". Diotima enjoyed standing in front of students at the Socratic Academy again. Years before, when she had served as head of the Socratic Academy, she was the most popular lecturer on the planet thanks to her knowledge of ancient cultures and her ability to clarify how to design new cultures. In those days, her position allowed her to influence the shape of the Socratic culture. At a certain stage, she understood that in order to influence the entire Atheist planet, it was not enough to teach at the Socratic Academy. She needed to be at the decision-making juncture. When she was offered the position of Minister of Culture again, she accepted. She showed leadership, instigated a revolution when she was able to take advantage of political opportunities, and thus arrived at her current position, Minister of Defense.

  "I am happy to stand here before you again, Scholars of consciousness. For me this is an opportunity to sharpen history to one specific aspect, the history of Consciousness. Today we will speak about consciousness healing in the ancient world." Everyone in the hall was in full attention. All those present were focused on her voice, a hypnotizing voice that demanded attention. A voice that broadcast power, no less than wisdom and authority.

  "Who knows as you do that there is no reality that is not dependent on the subjectivity of the beholder, or in your case, the position of the healer. Therefore arises the question, from what standpoint should we observe the ancient world? You would not be wrong if you said we must take the only relevant standpoint for us, our standpoint today. Indeed, what distorts our standpoint? You wouldn't be wrong if you answered that our standpoint only exists if it is distorted, like every standpoint. And still, what must we remove from our standpoint to make it less biased, less driv
en by the will to see something specific and ignore something else? Allow me to open with an introduction taken from the middle of history, the topic of which is Monotheism, and the connection between it and blindness, and then I will return to our topic, consciousness healing in the ancient world.

  "The belief in one God appeared first with the Atenistic Pharaohs, but was accepted and survived amongst the ancient Hebrews. The God who was chosen at the beginning to be the first, and later the only God, reflected the megalomaniacal tendencies of the leader who stood at the head of the nation, Tut Akhenaton, and then Moses. What monotheism instigated in the consciousness is a diversion to belief in one true approach. This condescending approach blinded one culture from looking at another culture.

  "Monotheism, mixed with imperialistic urges from the days of Greece and Rome, created the Byzantine Empire on one side, and Militant Islam on the other. We all know how this led to the creation of the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, to the Human-Gods' Wars, and eventually, to the destruction of Earth. What we may know less is that science itself is based on monotheistic belief. Science may have taken God out of the equation as far as the source of knowledge, but it did not cancel the exclusivity of a monotheistic God. Quite the opposite: the One and Only God lives on safely until today in the monolithic form of science.

  "When we read the clay tablets that the Ancient Sumerians left us, to teach us about supernatural powers as part of their Theory of Consciousness, I would request that you de-identify with the scientific standpoint that like Atheism, ranks itself above all others. I would request that you give full credit to polytheistic cultures as having access to knowledge that escapes science".

  Diotima stopped for a moment, drank from the glass of water that lay before her on the lectern, and scanned the faces of the students. Like every lecturer, she too was afraid that her listeners would find no interest in her words.

  "Now, after we have taken a cursory glance at history from its middle until our time, we will return to the beginning. Mesopotamian Clay tablets from three thousand five hundred years before the Christian era teach us how even then they were involved with consciousness healing. It was called "Oil Medicine", and its parallel, healing of the body, was called "Water Medicine". We read about symptoms which Oil healing base their origin in the consciousness, and the treatment for them is through the consciousness, in ways that are surprisingly similar to our own Socratic ways. Please refer to the entities known as consciousness patterns, Gods, demons or symptoms as similar entities, just as different metaphors, which are no less valid.

  How did the oil healer work? He was a storyteller. He used familiar images of demons and Gods and integrated them into a story in which the patient was a part; as the plot developed, the story became a drama that the patient was living, and so the symptom was cured when the plot was resolved. The oil healer preferred not to use demons and Gods. He tried first of all to make the patient see his sickness as an expression of a conflict within his own desires. If he succeeded in this, the patient could consciously choose between his conflicting desires, with all the sacrifices involved in that choice. If the healer did not succeed in this approach, he turned to demons.

  "Demons harass humans. They infiltrate their lives with orders and demands, abuse them, and most importantly, they appear as external sources. Even if the patient is gripped by demons residing within him, their source is still external.

  "The topologists among you," Diotima smiled at Enosh, "will of course be able to appreciate the importance of the use of demons to divide the expanse of the consciousness between inside and out. The use of demons allows the patient to cope with his own desires without being forced to recognize them. I'm sorry to tell those of you who think they invented something new that the desires that inflame you youngsters, are not young. The number of desires is as the number of demons, which teaches us that the ancients had no less desires than any of us." The students laughed and dispelled the tension that had been in the air until then from Diotima's mere presence, her being one of the most influential people on Dust.

  "If the healer did not succeed in getting rid of the demon, he would call upon a God. The God was the second choice for two reasons. Firstly because he was farther away from man, and his use encompassed a grave failure on the side of the patient who would not take responsibility for his desires, and secondly because the God wants nothing from man. God, by definition, lacks nothing, and certainly does not need anything from humans. It is the man or the healer who turns to the God with requests, and that is exactly his duty – to be the recipient of the request.

  "I will again command the focus of the topologists. Man and God sustain a structure which includes the man as a petitioner, God as a recipient, and the prayer or request as the letter. The true purpose of this structure is the ratification of the wording of the request".

  Diotima drew on the computer screen sitting on the podium and the diagram appeared on the screens next to each seat in the hall and on the screen behind her.

  "The oil healer would weave a story through which the request would pass on the steps of the pantheon of the Gods, and the changes that occurred in the request as it passed from step to step illustrated the changes in will in its different wordings. The oil healer and the patient would weave the story together and include in it themselves, the demons, and the appropriate Gods. Sometimes it would also include people close to the patient. The healing occurred while defining the request, the desire. The healer would express the desires of the demons and their responses and interpret their words through clues that he discovered by casting runes, reading the liver of animals, or observation of cloud forms.

  "I will demonstrate for you again, by topological means, this triangular relationship.

  "First of all, we must phrase the problem in terms of the demon's constant demands. For instance: 'the demon wants to suck the life-force from the man'. Next, we phrase the request to be released from the demon, and this is directed to the God. For instance: 'Inana, Goddess of Uruk, please distance this demon from me'. The part of the story which must be completed, in order to set the triangle in motion, is the phrasing of the will of the God toward the demon, in order to force the demon to release the human. For instance, 'I, Inana, Goddess of Uruk command you, the demon, to release human kind and return to your place in the netherworld.'

  "If you look at the triangular cycle of the relationships, you will note that there is no one starting point. Admittedly the starting point of the healer is the need of the person who turned to him, but this is an arbitrary starting point. It could just as easily be started with the need of the demon who wants the Goddess to turn to him. We can also phrase it like this: The problem nesting in the human is the attempt of the demon to petition the God, through the human. The human's job is to make the God deal with the demon".

  In the silence that prevailed when she finished speaking, not a single student said a word.

  "If everything's clear, I'll continue," she mocked them.

  The packed hall was silent. Diotima waited patiently.

  "Yes," the Minister of Defense pointed to a young student in the middle of the hall who raised her hand tentatively.

  The student rose. "Madam Defense Minister… If in our Atheist culture there are no Gods, and God serves as a recipient, how are we supposed to phrase our requests if there is no address for our prayers? The second question is: how do you see the future of the Atheistic planet in light of the lack of God?" She sat down, her face flushed.

  The fidgeting, chairs scraping and murmurs in the hall testified to the unease that had been awakened amongst the Atheist audience.

  Diotima smiled fondly at the student who had dared to open the discussion. After thinking for a moment, she answered: "The prayer, wish, or desire, are formulated on the back of the carrier wave, which is like an arrow leaving the human and aimed at the target, which is the God. This is much like a message carried on the back of a frequency that is broadcast out and aimed at a receiver. T
he Atheists are no different from the believers because they need the three points, the starting point, a vector, and a target. The difference is in the fact that while the believer sends his messages to God, the Atheist aims his messages at the lack of a God. This is even more complicated, but it's still possible. Just the same as a poet finds it easier to write to a reader, but he could also write to a drawer.

  "As for the future of the Atheist society, I anticipate that it will reconnect with the theistic cultures and there will be a search for a common denominator, which for the meantime I will call 'compassion', with all the caution necessary not to turn humans into a substitute for God. Having said that, I'm not ruling out the return of God to the scene".

  She knew the effect her words would have. Enosh looked at her in surprise. Diotima was no longer committed to the official discourse, because she no longer served as the head of the Socratic Academy, but he had not dreamed she would voice such heresy in such a public forum. A rustle of surprise tinged with anger went through the audience, but as soon as Diotima began to speak again, quiet descended once more on the hall.

  "I know you're surprised, but think for a moment: God left the cultural arena because he took upon himself destructive human qualities. In the period of survival, giving him up was necessary, but it was not done in vain. Meaninglessness plagues of that caused mental illness, first and foremost depression and suicide were running rampant on Dust. The Materialism that replaced meaning created economic polarization and poverty. The time has not yet come, but in time, we will have to choose whether to let go, or to adopt all the more forcefully our prejudices against God".